A Proud Polish-American Consul (and Counsel)

John Reed: [00:00:05] A funny thing happened on the way to this Sticky Lawyers episode. I had an idea to talk with a U.S. attorney working with a foreign consulate. Given the war in Ukraine and the role that Poland has played in humanitarian and other efforts, I reached out to our guest Richard Walawender, who serves as the honorary consul for the Consulate of the Republic of Poland in Detroit.

[00:00:27] Now, it's important to note that consul is spelled C O N S U L as in consulate. Different from counsel, C O U N S E L as in lawyer. So, in my infinite assumption of wisdom, I figured you had to be an attorney to be an honorary counsel. As Rick generously informed me though, that's not the case. Fortunately, as is often the case with sticky lawyers, there's another notable side to his practice that's distinct from the consulate.

[00:00:59] One that reflects his corporate and business law talents with his proud Polish heritage and foreign experience. We'll cover it all as if I planned it that way from the beginning. With that, let's meet our guest. Richard Walawender is a principal with Miller Canfield, a large law firm in Detroit, Michigan, where he leads the autonomous and connected vehicles group and played a large part in developing Miller Canfield's international practice.

[00:01:24] Although he's worked with companies on deals in Canada, Mexico, Asia, and Western Europe, he's made a significant impact in Poland and Eastern Europe. Rick, welcome to the podcast.

Rick Walawender [00:01:35]: Thank you. Thank you for having me, John.

John Reed: [00:01:37] Sure.

[00:01:37] Okay. Enough about you though. Tell me about your parents, and I'm being serious here because their stories and how they got to the U.S is remarkable and obviously made a huge indelible imprint on your life.

Rick Walawender: [00:01:49] Yeah, it does. My parents were born in Poland, or what was Poland before the Second World War. So, they were born in the late ‘20s, early ‘30s, born in the eastern part of Poland. When the war started, Poland, as everyone knows, was invaded by the German army from the west, but also two weeks later was invaded by the Soviet army from the east where my parents were.

[00:02:16] So what the Soviets did was straight out of the ethnic cleansing manual, is that they deported a million Poles that lived in that eastern part of Poland in early 1940, and they deported them to Siberia. And that's where both my parents—of course, they didn't know each other at that time—they were sent to different places.

[00:02:37] But my father was in a place in Siberia, near Novosibirsk. And the Poles, a lot of them died. A lot of the family died both on the way and while in Siberia. They were taken into forced labor camps, got indoctrinated, and tried to become, basically be a forced labor for the Soviets. When the Soviet Union was invaded, then in 1941 by Germany, Stalin wanted to become part of the Allied forces to fight Germany.

[00:03:11] And part of the deal that he had to agree to was that he would let the Poles that were in these forced labor camps, that he would let them go. And let them join a Polish army to then fight with the Allied forces. My father was too young and his brother, they were too young. They were only 12 years old at the time.

[00:03:34] So they were too young to join the Army. But these million Poles, a lot of the men joined the Polish army, fought in the Italian front, as did my father's uncle, who actually died in Italy, was killed in action fighting with the Polish army. My father and his brother ended up in India, first through Kazakhstan, where they were trying to survive basically, and then they finally made it to this Polish camp for children in India.

[00:04:07] In two camps, there were about 4,000 Polish kids, a lot of them orphans and displaced certainly, but it was a place where they found some refuge. And one camp that my father was at, it was actually sponsored by a Maharaji who just benevolently contributed and gave part of his fortune to sponsor these kids, these Polish kids.

[00:04:32] So while he was there, he spent like three years there in that camp. And toward the end of the war, there were some Polish priests that came from Michigan, looking to bring some of the boys over. And 70 of them signed up to come to, including my father, come to the United States to finish school at a place here called Orchard Lake St. Mary’s.

[00:04:54] So my father and these 70 other boys finished school here. Then went on to either become priests or, as my father did, he became a public school teacher. My dad also served in the Korean [War] and became a U.S. citizen. Then he met my mom, and that's how I ended up being born here in Detroit.

John Reed: [00:05:13] That's just stunning. From Russia to Siberia, to India, to Orchard Lake, to Korea, and nobly serving as a public school teacher. That's fantastic. But your mother has an interesting story as well.

Rick Walawender: [00:05:28] Yes. My mother took a little different route. Her father joined the Polish Army. And fought with the British forces and they were given refuge in Polish camps in what was then called Northern Rhodesia, today's Zimbabwe.

[00:05:45] So they spent the war years while my grandfather was fighting with the Polish Army in the Italian front. My mother and her mother and grandmother were in Polish refugee camps in Africa. And then after the war, they went to England finally. At that time, by the way, Northern Rhodesia was a part of the Commonwealth.

[00:06:04] That's why the British had set up camps there for these Polish refugees, and so they ended up meeting back in England and then made their way to Detroit looking for work and then a place to live. Because at that time, Poland became dominated by the Soviet Union, being in a communist country. And a lot of Poles that were outside of Poland after the war did not return because they didn't want to live under communism.

John Reed: [00:06:31] Talk to me about your childhood. I understand that many immigrants coming to a new country, whatever that country is, downplay their heritages and embrace the new nation's culture to fit in. Was that part of your upbringing? Is that your experience?

Rick Walawender: [00:06:49] No. It, I think you're right, but it certainly wasn't my personal experience.

[00:06:54] It was actually the opposite. We grew up speaking Polish. We grew up belonging to a lot of Polish organizations and scouts and dance groups, and so on and so forth. So, we were in Detroit at that time, a very close-knit Polish community. A big Polish community, but we were very involved in things Polish, and it did make a big mark in my life.

[00:07:18] And in terms of keeping not only that interest in Polish customs and traditions, but also in current events, what was going on there, and especially in Polish history. My dad was a, he was I mentioned, a public school teacher. He taught actually American history out of all things. But I developed an interest and a love for history and especially Polish history.

John Reed: [00:07:42] So like a good son reflecting your parents' American dream, you went off to college. What did you study? Was your focus on becoming a lawyer at that time?

Rick Walawender: [00:07:50] No, it wasn't. I actually, I majored in two things, and I went to the University of Michigan for undergrad and majored in political science. I actually was very interested in politics and thought that's where I was heading.

[00:08:05] But also in Russian, Eastern European studies naturally. And that was my real interest. I actually ran for office when I was 18 years old and almost won. And looking back at it, I'm glad I didn't. My life would've taken a completely different route.

John Reed: [00:08:22] What did you run for? I'm curious.

Rick Walawender: [00:08:24] For county commissioner.

John Reed: [00:08:26] Okay.

Rick Walawender: [00:08:27] Yeah. Lost by 47 votes. But as I was in undergrad, as I mentioned, I was really enamored and personally involved with what was going on in Poland at that time. And that was, especially in 1980, I was a junior and in 1980 the Solidarity Trade Union started in Poland. In 1981, again, my professors and mentors knew how interested I was, and so I worked out an arrangement to attend the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland.

[00:09:02] Frankly, it was partially for the academic experience, but really predominantly it was because I just wanted to be part of the action and what was going on. And I was, and I did get involved in strikes and marches for solidarity and help them out at their national headquarters in Gdansk and was able to make a lot of friends.

[00:09:24] So I returned back to finish up my undergrad studies to Michigan in September of ‘81. And a couple months later, actually in December of 1981, the government clamped down, declared martial law and arrested Solidarity and made it illegal, and detained and jailed a lot of the solidarity activists.

John Reed: [00:09:47] Interesting. So, you were a foreign exchange protestor. I don't think I've ever heard of that academic arrangement before, but it sounded like it certainly was an important place to be at the time.

Rick Walawender: [00:09:56] Yeah.

John Reed: [00:09:56] So you returned home, and at this point political science is great, but you're now thinking law.

Rick Walawender: [00:10:02] No, not quite yet.

[00:10:04] Okay. I'm still a few months away from that. I was actually, at that time my senior year, contemplating what to do. I was thinking more and more about just continuing on, and I actually did start in the master's program in history at Michigan. Because I graduated a semester early into my undergrad years.

[00:10:25] So I entered that program, and that's when it just came to me— and I don't know actually how it did— but I decided to apply to law school. And I only applied to one law school, and I figured if I get in, that's great. If not, I'll continue with academia. And so, I applied to University of Michigan Law School and was admitted, and that's when I never turned back.

John Reed: [00:10:50] So much of your undergraduate focus was on certainly Poli-Sci, but also the Russian Eastern European relations. What of that, as well as your experience in Poland, spilled over into your law school curriculum and then your practice focus?

Rick Walawender: [00:11:08] At that time, again, because Poland was still being suppressed, still under communist control, it didn't; there was not much of a connection.

[00:11:19] When I became a lawyer, I actually became a public finance lawyer and did a lot of municipal law and bond financing for municipalities, school districts, governmental units, worked on those kinds of things. So, it really didn't have, at that time, much of a connection. The connection came a few years later when I was an associate, a third-year associate in 1989. And that's when I got a phone call out of the blue from one of the people who my name was given to, called me up and he was the Solidarity's ambassador at large.

[00:11:57] In that year, again, I was following things very astutely and closely because I was still very interested in what was going on in Poland. But in that time, Poland, in June of ‘89, the country kept deteriorating economically and the government almost desperate, agreed with the Solidarity to, or the leaders, the former leaders of Solidarity to hold elections. And the Solidarity activists fielded a bunch of candidates. Then they won every single contested seat, which really shocked the government. Of course, it wasn't enough to form the government because only a third of the parliamentary seats were up for election, but they won every single one of them.

[00:12:42] And what happened then, a couple months later in August of ‘89, there were a couple kind of puppet parties call it, not the main Polish Communist Party, but a couple of the offshoots, which were really always just puppets of the Communist Party. But they suddenly got emboldened and agreed to split off from the Communist Party Coalition and formed a coalition government with Solidarity, and that's how Solidarity ended up taking control of the Polish government.

[00:13:14] That's when I got that phone call. Solidarity, now which was comprised of trade unionists and ordinary workers, laborers, but also with some intellectuals and professors who were sympathetic to the cause. None of them knew how to run a government. They were ministers, and they were running cabinet positions and offices and agencies without any kind of experience and without any kind of training, certainly because they were not part of the Communist Party at the time.

[00:13:47] So this guy calls me up representing this new Solidarity government and asks me if I would come to Poland to help them on some projects. And specifically, they were interested in a couple things.

[00:14:02] One is help rewriting some of their laws—a lot of their laws actually—but also and primarily to help attract businesses, specifically American businesses, to come and invest in Poland. And mind you, this is before the Berlin Wall came down. That didn't happen until November, but in August, this government was truly concerned that their short-lived experiment of taking over a communist regime with their Solidarity government wouldn't be tolerated by Moscow. And that any day the Soviet tanks would start coming across the border. And so, the thought was, and it sounds a little naive, but it made a lot of sense certainly to them, is if we get American companies to invest and to have a stake in Poland, it would make the Soviets think twice about invading because they wouldn't want to start a war or arresting Americans that were working in Poland.

John Reed: [00:15:07] So a defensive economic measure almost.

Rick Walawender: [00:15:11] And amazingly, again, I'm just a third-year associate practicing in public finance. When I threw out the idea, I was enamored with the thought. To me, it was a way to, as you described earlier, the way to bring back what I was studying in undergrad and my personal interests to my professional practice. But when I presented this to our managing partner at the time, I thought, for sure, he'd either start laughing or tell me to reconsider my future at the firm or something. But instead, he thought it was a great idea.

[00:15:46] And he encouraged me to do it. Not only did he and the other managing partners allow me to do it, they encouraged me to do it. And they even, my third trip because I started going there back and forth, and the third trip, which was again about November, several of them came with me, flew to Poland maybe to make sure that I was really doing what I was telling them because it was pretty hard to believe.

John Reed: [00:16:13] Sure.

Rick Walawender: [00:16:13] But also, we had meetings with some ministers, government officials, and they came back and reported to everyone else that this is real. Then the wall came down in Berlin and the whole Eastern Europe regime change took place, and they fell out of the Soviet orbit.

[00:16:33] So it turned out to be not as big a threat as initially, it sounded about Russian tanks coming across. But because I was there and I got quite a bit of publicity, it was a pretty novel thing what I was doing in Poland helping the government with financing programs but also encouraging investment. When the wall came down in Berlin that's when I started getting phone calls from Fortune 500 companies.

[00:17:04] Here they're calling, at that time, a fourth-year associate saying, “you're the only American we know on that side of Europe.” And they were interested, obviously for purely economic reasons to start investing in Eastern Europe and beginning with Poland. And so, I found myself setting them up, incorporating them, establishing them, advising them on investing and how to do that and how to run a business in that part of the world and certainly in Poland.

John Reed: [00:17:36] It's interesting. We've had another guest on this show, Craig White, a corporate and business lawyer, and had the opportunity to go to South Africa and teach business law to local lawyers there. And when he first got there, he's amongst all these other lawyers, and they're trying to teach highfalutin M&A skills and major corporate deals and things like that, and he found they had to regroup. They had to teach them the basics of buying and selling a business and business structures and things like that.

[00:18:09] I'm curious, you have this fantastic opportunity to get in on—sounds sexier than it is I'm sure—but this ground floor of creating legislation, of bringing investment. What was the environment like when you got there? You've got increasing privatization. Are the people that you're dealing with—I hope this doesn't come out the wrong way—were they sophisticated enough in law and legal transactions and business transactions, or did you have to also bring them that education as well?

Rick Walawender: [00:18:40] I'll tell you one interesting anecdote. One of the first projects I worked on with Solidarity was to set up a bank. They wanted very much to set up the first private commercial bank in Eastern Europe or in this former Soviet bloc.

[00:18:58] Of course, I didn't know how to set a bank up.

John Reed: [00:19:00] Didn't come up in law school.

Rick Walawender: [00:19:03] No. It didn't come up in law school. But what was more intriguing is that the Polish did have a banking code. It was basically gathering dust on the bookshelf for 45 years because no one had set up a private commercial bank.

[00:19:18] Yeah, there were banks in Poland, but they were all state-owned banks, basically. You call them banks, but they were in essence agencies of the government under the communist regime. So, you pull out the Polish banking code, and it's very short. It was in place before World War II. But it had a section on how to set up a bank and what was required in an application to establish a bank.

[00:19:46] And there were just, I don’t know, five, six items: what's the name of the bank, what's the address? Really basic things. Unlike here where you didn't have to put together financial statements, you didn't have to put together any list of directors that were and their experience and officers.

[00:20:06] So we filled out this application. And by the way, one of my other roles in this bank project was to try to find the capital for the bank. And we actually did. We ended up raising $6 million and eventually $10 million of capital from U.S. investors to fund this bank. And so, we applied, we submitted our application. And what was really funny at the time is I called them earlier at the National Bank of Poland and said we're gonna be filing this application. Where should I send it? And they said, “Come on in, and we'll take the application.”

[00:20:48] And we, even though that application technically could have been literally three or four pages to fulfill the requirements in the code, we made it look like a more normal bank application would look like here in the States. And we had exhibits, we did include financial projections, and so on and so forth. And so, it was a little booklet. And so, I was invited to the National Bank of Poland headquarters and four or five of the senior officers, the president of the National Bank of Poland as well, greeted me. We submitted the application, and it was almost a little ceremony because this was the first time they saw anything like this.

John Reed: [00:21:29] Sure.

Rick Walawender: [00:21:30] So I asked them, what happens next? And they started giggling, and one of them said, “we're really not sure ourselves, but we'll let you know.”

John Reed: [00:21:37] And I have to imagine what you provided probably became a template, an exemplar for how things were done moving forward.

Rick Walawender: [00:21:44] You know what? That's a good point. I don't even know that, but I'm sure it was because it was a good template. I had a lot of help putting that together, trust me. But going back to your question about the sophistication, surprisingly there was more sophistication, and maybe not so much in the nuances, but in the general ideas about setting up, how to run a corporation and you know how to set it up and what directors would be and what the roles of officers would be.

[00:22:12] A lot more acumen in that than I would've imagined there. Now when it comes to doing things like acquisitions on the M&A front, it was a completely different world negotiating either an asset purchase agreement or a share purchase agreement. And that was because they just didn't have certain concepts.

[00:22:33] The idea of an escrow was completely foreign to them. The word indemnification, you had to explain in a couple sentences because there was no exact word for that at the time. And those kinds of basic things. I ended up those first few years, especially on doing M&A deals, because as you mentioned, there was a lot of privatization going on, and the government was committed to privatize all these state-owned companies.

[00:23:03] So there were a lot of opportunities, but in negotiating with the other side, and yeah, there were lawyers in Poland. Most of them frankly didn't have any, obviously any, experience in this area. So, the negotiation sometimes went on for days and not because we were negotiating business points, but basically ended up having to explain, going paragraph by paragraph, explaining why we think that provision is important and what it means.

[00:23:34] And so I did a lot of that kind of teaching to opposing counsel on these deals.

John Reed: [00:23:40] So I'm curious; this is a question that's completely out of the blue. You're educating these lawyers there. Do you have any knowledge of how that and your participation affected the development of the law school curriculum in Poland?

Rick Walawender: [00:23:57] I should say beginning about a couple years later, especially in 1991, there were a lot more lawyers that came from the U.S. A lot of other firms came. And from Western Europe. And so, by no means was I the only one doing this stuff. But interestingly, we set up an office together. I co-founded it with a lawyer who was at the time I met him, we were working on the bank project. He was actually representing Solidarity, and that's how we got to know each other. So, him and I set up our first office in Gdansk.

John Reed: [00:24:38] And we should say that was an office with your firm?

Rick Walawender: [00:24:41] Yes.

John Reed: [00:24:41] Not an independent office. Okay.

Rick Walawender: [00:24:43] No. That was a Miller Canfield office. Again, one of the first firms to set up an office in Poland. But our next office we set up in Warsaw, and we recruited two younger lawyers there who were also professors at the University of Warsaw Law School. They were very young. They were at that time, maybe 30 years old or something, but they were also adjunct professors after they joined our firm too and continued.

[00:25:09] And they took a lot of what they learned in practicing law with me and with our firm and applied it directly in their law school classes. So, in that way, there was a direct impact. The law school at that time, probably for the first five years after the change took, so up until ‘95, they still, they didn't teach any commercial law courses.

[00:25:33] Because they didn't have professors that really were well-versed in it. And then the curriculum started changing, obviously when more deals and more companies and more demand. It was more demand for, they called it, commercial contract law. It became a little bit of a different kind of experience than we're used to in the U.S.

[00:25:56] At that time, they were teaching the Polish commercial code as basically a memorization exercise.

John Reed: [00:26:03] Okay.

Rick Walawender: [00:26:04] And it wasn't like here; they didn't use the Socratic method. Of course, a lot of code countries in Europe don't really use the Socratic method. But that was really the toughest thing to be able to unwind from the hires that we made of lawyers coming out of Polish law schools because they weren't trained to think critically.

[00:26:25] They were trained to memorize sections of the code. And that eventually over time did change, but it took probably another decade before law schools over there started adapting to that kind of teaching style.

John Reed: [00:26:40] So switching gears, let's go back to where I started this whole thing. How did you become the honorary consul for Poland?

Rick Walawender: [00:26:47] It came through all this work that I was doing in Poland. As I said, I had a lot of clients here and in Poland going back and forth probably on a, on a monthly basis doing these transactions and representing clients, and so I became known to a lot of the Polish diplomatic corps.

[00:27:10] Also, our firm was hosting trade missions both inbound and outbound with Poland, Eastern Europe, but there was no consulate in Detroit at that time. And the last time there was a consulate was right after World War II, and then they closed it down because at that time they really, probably the Polish Communist government didn't need a consulate here because there was not much to do for them.

[00:27:32] So I guess I was asked one day by the Consul General of Poland in Chicago. He had dinner with me and wanted to talk about what was going on, and then he offered me a position, and it was the position of an honorary consul in Detroit, which covers the entire state of Michigan.

[00:27:52] And I really didn't know what that entailed. He explained it to me and so he recommended me, and I was approved by the Polish Foreign Minister and became an honorary consul.

John Reed: [00:28:03] What does the job entail now and how much of it did you bring anew to the position? You've got this fantastic record, this incredible journey you've had of bringing knowledge to Poland.

[00:28:16] You say this was the first honorary consul in Detroit for Michigan. Did you blaze a trail with that role too, or was it a little more structured?

Rick Walawender: [00:28:25] It was a little more structured than that. The role of an honorary consul, and not just for Poland, but for any consulate, the emphasis is on the word honorary.

[00:28:36] You don't get paid. You do things pro bono. It ends up costing you, personally, a lot of money, frankly, to go places and do things. But you are basically an assistant, a representative of the Polish diplomatic corps here in the United States, in the state of Michigan. And formally you are charged with handling certain governmental types of administrative matters.

[00:29:01] So if there's a, let's say a Polish citizen were to be arrested and the arresting authority, whether it's the county or the sheriff's office or a local police department, they have an obligation to contact the honorary counsel if that person is a citizen of Poland. And my job then would be to either visit them or talk to them to make sure they have counsel. And that they're being lawfully detained. Not that I represent them, because I'm not allowed to represent them personally, but if there is a problem, I'm charged with either trying to help them find legal counsel or to file a complaint if there's something wrong.

[00:29:44] And also things like doing welfare checks. If there's a Polish citizen living on their own or in a nursing home and so on, and their family in Poland can't find them, they'll contact me through the embassy or the consulate in Chicago and ask me to do a welfare check to make sure everything is okay.

[00:30:03] And one of the big duties is also when there's a Polish government delegation here or when there's former government, Polish governmental people that come to Michigan, I'm there to offer my, again, assistance and services. And there is actually quite a few visits from Polish officials and former officials, especially at the University of Michigan where they attend conferences and so on. So, I do a lot of that.

[00:30:32] The other things that frankly, I think take up even more of my time as an honorary consul fall into, call it, the promotion among the general public of Polish culture, history, language, and tradition. So, I'm invited to a lot of different Polish organizations, and they have special occasions to give talks or to update them on what's going on in Poland.

[00:30:57] So there's that sort of cultural historical advocacy role too. Another thing that I do quite a bit, and because I like doing it, I also have relationships with state and local officials here. Because one of the jobs of the honorary consul is to promote the Polish government's interests.

[00:31:17] And a lot of that is on the economic trade development front. So, for instance, having trade missions both coming and going to Michigan and Poland, I get involved in a lot of those things. I help promote them, sponsor them, and facilitate those kinds of trade missions and involvement. Also, holding seminars and meetings and conferences about investing in Poland.

[00:31:44] And then when I'm in Poland, the same kind of thing, I act as informal ambassador, and that's just because they know I'm from Michigan and especially on the automotive front. They invite me to speak to issues regarding investing in the US.

John Reed: [00:31:59] Now, I've admitted one aspect of my ignorance earlier, and here's another.

[00:32:03] While it's been very heartening to see the aid and support that Poland has given its Ukrainian neighbors since the invasion, I thought that there had already been a warm relationship between the two countries, but I was wrong, as you kindly informed me when we talked before. Can you educate our listeners, like you did for me, about how the relationship was, what it was like before, and what this unfortunate war has done, not only there, but also here?

Rick Walawender: [00:32:33] Sure. Again, a lot of things stem from in the Polish psyche, call it, from World War II. And before World War II, before World War I, actually, Poland did not exist as a country anymore. It was partitioned back in the late 18th century among Prussia and Austria-Hungarian Empires.

[00:32:58] They ended up conquering Poland and even though Poland was established as a nation formally over a thousand years ago, its boundaries have changed a lot over history. So, during the partition times, there were Polish patriots that were leading insurrections trying to foment revolution to, to get Poland back on the map.

[00:33:23] But after several of these insurrections and revolutions they all were unsuccessful. Until World War I started, and then there was an opportunity because again, boundaries were changing. Empires were falling. A communist revolution took place in Russia. Poland was able to reconstitute itself. And it's, that's a long story we could get into how that happened.

[00:33:48] But it also was very important for the United States, and it was one of Woodrow Wilson's 14 points was the reestablishing of Poland. At that time, the boundaries of Poland were different than what they are today. They were more eastward. Again, remember I told you about where my parents were in Eastern Poland; that is not in Poland today.

[00:34:12] Today that is in Belarus and Ukraine. And in that part of Poland, in that southern eastern part, there were obviously a lot of Ukrainians that lived there. They were also not too happy that they were in Poland and not in Ukraine and that goes back for centuries in terms of the relationships between the Polish nobility and the peasantry, whether they be Polish peasantry, or Ukrainian or Belarussian, or others.

[00:34:41] So there was a lot of conflict that went on. But during World War II, specifically in that part of Poland, again, my parents were already well into Siberia. But when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, as I mentioned, the German army also recruited bands of Ukrainians to help them assist them in fighting against the Soviets. And as a result of that, Poland was on the other side, obviously in terms of there was no Polish government at the time, they were conquered, but the Polish army was fighting with the Allied forces. So, there was a lot of turmoil between Ukrainians and Poles in that, especially eastern part of Poland.

[00:35:24] And there were, frankly, there were massacres that were going on. Especially this one area called Bowen in Poland, and it became a real sore spot. Going back to the historical, that historical time, it became a big sore spot for a lot of Poles in terms of their attitude toward Ukrainians. And so there was not a lot of interaction between Poles and Ukrainians, whether that was here in the U.S. among the immigrants in the diaspora communities of both nationalities or in Poland and Ukraine at that time.

[00:35:57] And so I would say that the relationship between most Poles and most Ukrainians, whether they were here in the US or back in Europe, were cold, to say the least.

John Reed: [00:36:08] No love lost.

Rick Walawender: [00:36:10] No love lost. And then in 2014, things started turning much different.

[00:36:17] That was when Russia invaded Donbas area in Eastern Ukraine and took over Crimea. And the Polish government at the time became very concerned that this is not going to stop. Russia's not going to stop there. And so, it fostered a very close relationship with the Ukrainian government at that time in 2014.

[00:36:38] And so those two governments started working a lot more closely because Poles know one thing in their history. That is, they know what it means to be oppressed by the Russians. Or by the Soviets. Which is why Poland always wanted to be, one of its main objectives after 1989, was to join NATO to have allies to protect against any potential Russian invasion. And they were concerned that Russia wouldn't stop in Ukraine. So then fast forward to when Russia again invaded Ukraine is a spontaneous, kind of an outburst of the response of Polish people in Poland and here in the U.S. I would say.

[00:37:24] It wasn't really orchestrated. It wasn't called for. Yeah, the government was very supportive of Ukraine, but especially in Poland, ordinary households would be bringing in Ukrainian mothers and children. Men weren't allowed to leave the country, but 3 million Ukrainian women and children crossed the border into Poland.

[00:37:44] And then all the news that was being relayed about that caused immediately an outpouring in the Polish communities here in the U.S. to also help in the effort. And so, we would have, and I was involved in several of these not just rallies supporting Ukraine, but the Ukrainian community invited me to a couple of their major events to say a few words and to thank me as a representative of the Polish government for everything that Poland is doing.

[00:38:14] And it just became just a completely different kind of relationship between these two peoples, Poles and Ukrainians. Both in Poland and here.

John Reed: [00:38:25] As I say, I guess I can't find a better word than heartening and inspiring, but it's certainly wonderful to see. And of course, in September, Miller Canfield announced a new formal affiliation with a law firm in Kyiv, and I'm sure that was led by your efforts as well.

[00:38:40] Can you talk to us about that a little bit?

Rick Walawender: [00:38:43] That's also a nice little story. As I mentioned, all the Ukrainian refugees in Poland, you figure there's probably a lawyer or two among that. And as it turned out, one of our associates in our Warsaw office was dropping his child, I think his daughter off to kindergarten school like he does every day.

[00:39:05] And he met a Ukrainian woman who was dropping her child off because Poland opened up its schools to all the Ukrainian refugee kids. So, she was dropping her daughter off at kindergarten, and they started talking, and he welcomed her to our office. He said, “Feel free to come use our office. You need to call back home, deal with any kind of client issues, or whatever.”

[00:39:28] So she started coming to our office and met our other lawyers in the office and one of them called me up and said, “Rick you gotta meet her. Her name is Olena. She has a really interesting practice.” And so, we set up a Zoom call, and I met her first over Zoom. And it turned out that her major client is in Kyiv, that's where her office is; she has a small office with her husband in Kyiv.

[00:39:54] Her major client is the Ukrainian Construction Association, and I figure, wow, there's going to be a big need for reconstructing Ukraine. Their infrastructure is in shambles and hospitals and schools and roads and bridges all need to be rebuilt. And the U.S. government, the EU, World Bank, IFC, they have all announced major programs, a Marshall Plan, to help rebuild Ukraine once they can start doing that.

[00:40:30] And so we started talking about those kinds of projects and what it's going to take. And they were having conferences in Warsaw, mainly at the time and she was invited as a speaker to talk about how to do business in Ukraine a lot. Like hearkening back to what I was doing in 1990 in Poland, and it just started snowballing from there.

[00:40:52] We ended up saying, “Olena, let's merge our firms or set up an affiliation technically,” and that's what we did. So, we opened up an office in Kyiv, and she goes back and forth from Warsaw to Kyiv. And they had a conference, a major conference in Kyiv on, again, rebuilding Ukraine. There were probably 400 some conference participants.

[00:41:17] And she was one of the prominent speakers, and I helped provide her with some pointers on her presentation. But while she was giving her presentation, the air raid siren started throughout the whole city. And so, they had to evacuate the conference hall and go into the bomb shelters for four hours.

[00:41:36] And what is amusing about that was that she was saying, “Rick, that was the best networking venue I could have ever been to. You're literally shoulder to shoulder with all these people and so what do you do? You end up talking to them.” So, she handed out more cards there than she would've at the conference.

John Reed: [00:41:56] I hate to laugh, but there's humor in that macabre story. I know, right? Whoever thought that building relationships in a bomb shelter would be the key to success? This has been fascinating. It's almost like Zelig to look at your career and where you've inserted yourself in Solidarity in the development of post-communist Poland and now with the relationships you have with this woman and this law firm in Kyiv and what's happening there.

[00:42:21] So I really appreciate it. And I also, Rick, really appreciate your kindness and setting me straight on the various false assumptions I had or mistakes that I made. I'm much more aware of consulate affairs than I ever have been before, and I also have a better understanding of Eastern European relations and history.

[00:42:37] We will definitely put information about you and your various roles and activities on our website, because I'm sure our listeners will want to find out more about you. And I just want to thank you. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me today, and I applaud you, and I applaud what you've done to make this world a little bit smaller.

Rick Walawender: [00:42:53] Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, John. It was enjoyable, and I enjoyed it.

John Reed: [00:42:57] And now for a shameless plug. Are you a first-time Sticky Lawyers listener? If so, please subscribe, and you can go back and listen to other episodes on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts and Spotify, and all the other platforms that are out there.

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[00:43:32] Until next time, I'm John Reed, and you've been listening to Sticky Lawyers.